Deportations

5th April 2006

Response to Home Office Consultation paper – Tackling Human Trafficking

SummaryThe consultation paper says it will consider prevention and investigation of trafficking, and provisions for protection and assistance to victims of trafficking, including increased police powers and immigration legislation. In our experience, far from protecting women from violence, anti-trafficking legislation is being used for immigration control, as an excuse to increase deportations and to prevent women crossing international borders. This […]

30th November 2005

Statement: Police steal and threaten in sex worker raids

On 6 October 2005, over 40 police and immigration officers raided 55 flats in the Baker Street area of central London. 70 sex workers were held and questioned, some for up to five hours. Women working as ‘maids’ for the working girls were forced to sign cautions under threat that otherwise the flat would be […]

1st June 2005

Social Justice Network: Trafficking victim criminalised and imprisoned

In February 2001, we organized an emergency picket to protest against police and immigration raids against 60 immigrant women in Soho, London. The protest got widespread sympathetic media coverage and as a result the raids were publicly condemned and their legality challenged by women’s groups, prominent lawyers, MPs and church people. Many deportations were stopped […]

9th April 2003

Feminist Review: Anti-trafficking legislation – protection or deportation?

Anti- trafficking legislation: protection or deportation

5th April 2003

Legislacion contra el Trafico de Mujeres: Proteccion o deportacion?

Translation Feminist Review 73 2003, anti-trafficking legislation: protection or deportationRevista Feminista N° 73LEGISLACIÓN CONTRA EL TRÁFICO DE MUJERES: ¿PROTECCIÓN O DEPORTACIÓN?En noviembre de 2002, bajo el pretexto de proteger a las mujeres de la violencia y la explotación, el gobierno británico introdujo una nueva legislación contra el tráfico de mujeres en el marco de la Ley […]

18th February 2003

BBC News: Soho sex workers speak out against ‘clean up’

By Jon SilvermanIn November 2002 the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, told a London conference Britain was facing a growing threat from Balkan crime gangs, who make vast profits by smuggling – whether guns, drugs, or women destined for the sex trade.The following month two Albanian cousins were given long jail sentences for living off the […]

17th August 2002

Independent: Trafficking women into prostitution

…”Even other prostitutes are suspicious of claims that the eastern European women are victims of exploitation. Niki Adams of the English Collective of Prostitutes said all the Albanian women she had met had claimed to be “working independently” and none had said she was being exploited by criminal racketeers.”There are a number of women in […]

10th February 2002

The Guardian: Letter – anti-trafficking laws hurt women,

Your cover story (Review, last week) repeats misinformation aimed at promoting new anti-trafficking laws. An unbiased look would spot that such laws would remove the requirement for the victim to give evidence against her abuser, thus enabling her immediate deportation.The use of anti-trafficking as a means for deportation was exposed in last year’s Soho raids. […]

14th July 2001

Economist: Letter on protecting prostitutes

You report claims that the Albanian Mafia has taken over Soho (“SoHopeless”, June 23rd). This is a government fabrication aimed at justifying a police clampdown on prostitute women there and laying the basis for anti trafficking legislation that would increase police powers at women’s expense.In 1999, we successfully opposed attempts by Westminster Council to evict […]

1st July 2001

Refugee Women’s News: Anti-trafficking legislation – protection or deportation

In many countries, including Britain, governments are introducing legislation against trafficking under the guise of protecting women from violence and exploitation. Feminists have initiated or supported such moves, and few have cared to look at what their effect is on the women they are supposed to protect.Recent police and immigration raids are telling. On 15 […]